Fifteen residents have registered four hens apiece and bylaw officers received 31 chicken complaints between last September and May. That compares to 68 backyard-chicken complaints in the year before the pilot project got under way.

Council will examine the issue in September, deciding whether to extend the pilot project, end it or amend zoning bylaws to allow the backyard chickens.

The various municipalities that dot the map from Horseshoe Bay, to the east end of the Fraser Valley, to the 49th parallel, have different concerns to juggle, not to mention industrial chicken operations to safeguard in the Fraser Valley. The avian flu scare of 10 years ago and the culling of more than 17 million fowl that resulted are still fresh in people’s minds.

So official attitudes run the gamut, from North Vancouver, where you’re allowed eight hens and you don’t need to register your birds, to the likes of Chilliwack and Langley Township, where residential hens are banned.

“Sometimes it (banning backyard coops) is beyond understanding,” North Vancouver city mayor Darrell Mussatto said. “We in the City of North Vancouver have had excellent results with backyard chickens.

“And why would you register your chickens? For what purpose?”

Froese, the mayor of Langley Township, points to rodents such as rats that are attracted to residential coops.

“And we have a very large poultry industry,” on agricultural zoned land, said the mayor, who was raised on a chicken farm and who currently owns a turkey farm run by his son.

“In 2004, the effects of the avian flu were dramatic. So we’re cautious where these things go.”

But the township doesn’t send out bylaw officers to make sure the law is upheld.

“If someone has a couple of hens and the neighbours don’t complain, it’s not an issue,” Froese said. “We enforce the bylaw on a complaint basis.”

Vancouver’s residential coop bylaw is four years old.

In 2013 there were 165 registered backyard coops, 107 of them on the city’s east side. And in four years, city hall has logged just 15 coop-related complaints.

While the number of hens allowed varies municipality to municipality, other rules are pretty consistent.

No roosters are allowed, for instance. Cute up to about six months old, the males get aggressive and loud. And four hens isn’t really enough to keep one rooster happy, according to Jordan Maynard, who runs Southlands Heritage Farm off of Southwest Marine Drive in Vancouver.

Maynard had offered his urban farm when he heard Vancouver was contemplating spending $20,000 to build a halfway house for wayward chickens, whether they had escaped or been set loose by bored owners.

But aside from a couple of chickens that were brought in soon after the backyard-chicken bylaw came into effect in 2010, that service has not been needed.

“It just hasn’t happened any more,” Maynard said. “We haven’t had any calls in three years.”

What he does get is the odd rooster, hatched illegally, being brought in.

“I mean, there’s a 50-per-cent chance the bird is going to be a rooster,” he said. “Probably one rooster per 10 hens is optimal.

“We’re a working farm, we tell people, ‘If you want your rooster to live a long life, find somewhere else to take it.’”

Because it’s hard to tell the difference between a rooster and hen when they’re first born, and to make sure a bird isn’t diseased, you’re not allowed to bring backyard chicks home until they’re at least four months old.

And there’s no backyard slaughter allowed, nor sales of eggs.

Coop builder and hen owner Duncan Martin, for one, wishes Vancouver would look at increasing the number of hens allowed to eight or 10, and consider removing the ban on slaughter.

Hens have a productive laying life of about four or five years, and slaughtering one once in a while and having it for dinner would do more to help city dwellers reconnect with rural roots, he said.

“I think it’s something we should revisit,” said Martin, who builds coops in a small workshop in the backyard of his East Van house.

“I don’t see why we can’t deconstruct these artificial differences between city and rural life that are artificial differences created through bylaws.

“I don’t see why we can’t have our kids see how to slaughter chicken, have them see getting meat at its source.

“It’s a sensitive subject and I’m not pushing for unlimited backyard slaughter. It’s just a logical way of dealing with laying hens that no longer produce eggs — it completes the cycle.”

Meanwhile, for those who have tasted an egg and its bright orange yolk from a hen that’s had the free run of a backyard and thus a big variety in its diet, there’s nothing better.

Mayor Mussatto has a neighbour raising hens six doors down the lane from his Central Lonsdale home.

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